They don’t share a lobby group, a governing body, or much common ground. But a growing number of them are raising the same concern about the same law.
Here’s a question worth sitting with: when was the last time you saw physicians, psychologists, chiropractors, dentists, naturopaths, and physiotherapists publicly agree on anything?
These professions don’t share a lobby group. They don’t share a governing body. Many of them disagree with each other regularly about scope of practice, referral pathways, even what counts as evidence-based care. That’s normal. It’s part of a healthy, diverse healthcare system.
Which is exactly why what’s happening right now in British Columbia is worth a closer look.
We’re tracking a growing number of professional associations, unions, and independent coalitions — drawing concerned members from physicians, psychologists, chiropractors, dentists, naturopaths, and more — that have raised concerns about the Health Professions and Occupations Act, known as the HPOA, and are calling for it to be repealed and replaced. To be clear: this isn’t every member of every profession, and it isn’t official across-the-board consensus. Most professionals, like most of the public, haven’t had this on their radar yet. What we’re seeing is a growing number of associations, unions, and independent groups of practitioners — a smattering from each field, not a unanimous chorus — reaching the same conclusion on their own.
Separately, Doctors of BC has been raising concerns with government since 2019, when the Cayton Report first signalled that changes were coming. Now that the HPOA is in force, their advocacy has shifted toward monitoring its real-world impact on physicians and pushing for physicians to have meaningful influence over how HPOA-related matters are handled going forward — while its members report rising concerns about defensive medicine, moral injury, and physicians considering early retirement or leaving the province altogether.1 That’s a distinct position, arrived at independently, from a different direction — and it’s pointing at the same piece of legislation.
That kind of alignment doesn’t happen over paperwork.
It’s not that every professional in BC has weighed in. But when separate, independently-formed groups across fields that rarely coordinate — fields that don’t always agree with each other on much — start raising the same alarm around the same time, that pattern deserves attention. Not because volume equals truth, but because it’s unusual, and unusual is worth understanding.
So what is the HPOA, actually?
The Health Professions and Occupations Act has been the law governing more than 122,000 regulated healthcare providers in BC since April 1, 2026. If that’s the first you’re hearing of it, you’re not alone — most British Columbians have no idea it exists, let alone that it already applies to the person treating them, their kids, or their aging parents right now.
At its core, the HPOA shifts significant power over healthcare regulation away from independent, profession-led oversight and toward direct government control — including who sits on regulatory boards and how investigations and discipline are handled.
As psychologists, our concern isn’t abstract. It’s about what this means in the therapy room:
- Privacy — broader access to confidential client files, without consent, by government-appointed assessors
- Trust — clients may hesitate to disclose difficult, sensitive material if they’re unsure who can read their file, and when
- Access to care — clinicians facing more regulatory pressure may retire early, narrow their practice, or leave the province, worsening an already strained system
- The shift from ethics to enforcement — care decisions guided less by clinical judgment and more by defensive practice
These aren’t hypothetical fears dreamed up by professionals worried about oversight. Every group in this coalition has said, clearly, that they support strong public protection and accountability. This isn’t a defense of the old system. It’s a warning that the new one goes too far in a different, riskier direction — trading independent, evidence-based regulation for concentrated political control.
Why this matters to you, specifically
You don’t need to be a healthcare provider for this to affect you. If you’ve ever seen a doctor, a psychologist, a dentist, a chiropractor, a naturopath, a physiotherapist, or any of the many other regulated health professions in this province — or ever will — this law already governs that relationship.
The public conversation about the HPOA has been almost entirely absent, while the professional one has been growing louder for months. That gap is the problem. Decisions this significant, about how your care is regulated and who can access your records, deserve public attention, not silence.
What you can do
- Watch and share our two new videos breaking this down in under a minute each
https://youtube.com/shorts/dfHQNi4Nx98?feature=share
https://youtube.com/shorts/umPY9nAFgbs?feature=share - Visit https://www.hpoa-psychologists.com/for the full list of concerns, source documents, and media coverage
- Sign the petition supporting the repeal and replacement of this law https://c.org/ykhs99Mw6b
- Contact your MLA and ask them where they stand on independent healthcare governance
A small but growing number of professionals, from associations and unions to independent coalitions across BC’s health professions — professions that rarely agree on much — are raising their hands at the same time. That’s not noise. That’s worth listening to.
— Psychologists for Ethical Care and Governance
Psychologists for Ethical Care and Governance is an independent group of licensed psychologists in British Columbia. The views expressed here reflect the perspectives of individual members of this group and do not represent the official position of the College of Health and Care Professionals of BC, any regulatory body, employer, professional association, or government agency.
The opening of this article is a good point. You almost never see medical doctors, psychologists, and chiropractors agreeing on the same issue. The fact that individuals and groups in all of these different fields are raising the exact same warning is what caught my attention. If they are this worried about government overreach, the rest of us should be paying attention too. Thank you for “sounding the alarm”.
Thank you for articulating this so clearly, and putting it out there. Many of us are still trying to figure out exactly how the new college bylaws will be enforced under the HPOA, and the lack of straightforward answers is highly stressful. Stripping away independent, profession-led oversight in favour of political control is a dangerous shift that will ultimately hurt patient trust.